As the Commonwealth Games get underway on Australia’s Gold Coast, DAVID ADAMS speaks with Australian athlete Eloise Wellings about how the obstacles in her running career have shaped her Christian faith – and led to her to a unique partnership helping communities in northern Uganda…
When Australian runner Eloise Wellings takes off from the starting line at the Commonwealth Games on Australia’s Gold Coast, it will be another step in a remarkable journey which has not only seen her overcome some incredible obstacles in her career as a 5,000 and 10,000 metre runner but also play an important role in helping to empower women living in communities more than 11,000 kilometres away.
For as well as previously representing Australia at three Commonwealth Games – Melbourne, Glasgow and Delhi – and two Olympics – London and Rio (where she was the highest ever placed Australian in the 10,000 metres, finishing 10th), Ms Wellings – along with Ugandan and former child soldier Julius Achon – is also a founder of charity, the Love Mercy Foundation, which aims to support communities in northern Uganda.
“It’s [been] such a privilege to be able…to link up with Julius and come alongside his vision for his community,” says Ms Wellings. “I would never in a million years have imagined that we’d be doing aid work in Africa but it’s just kind of one of those ‘God things’. I feel like I have a responsibility to use what I have been entrusted with and have the opportunity to do…”
MAKING A DIFFERENCE: Eloise Wellings with Julius Achon, co-founders of Love Mercy. PICTURE: Supplied.
Starting the charity with Julius came about after one of the low points in Ms Wellings’ running career – her inability to complete in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games thanks to a stress fracture in her foot (one of many similar injuries she’s suffered during her running career). But it was another low point early on in her running career – this time when she missed out on competing in the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000, again due to injury – that prepared the ground for what was to come.
Then 16, Ms Wellings had qualified to compete in the Games when she was informed she had a stress fracture in her femur and would be unable to do so.
“I would never in a million years have imagined that we’d be doing aid work in Africa but it’s just kind of one of those ‘God things’. I feel like I have a responsibility to use what I have been entrusted with and have the opportunity to do…”
– Eloise Wellings
“Obviously at 16 years-old, I was devastated, I felt like I’d lost my identity…” she says, adding that while she knew God – she had grown up attending a Catholic church, she felt that her failure to make the Games meant she had done something to displease Him and that He was punishing her as a result.
It was a girl at her school – Lisa – who came up to her one lunchtime and told her that she and members of church were praying for her and that they believed God had a “great plan” for her life. Deeply moved by the girl’s words, Ms Wellings ended up accompanying Lisa to church. There, she says, she encountered the love and grace of Jesus.
“My whole perspective of what it meant to have a relationship with God changed. I guess it was a real faith awakening and…I really had a revelation of grace and Jesus’ love for me. It basically transformed my identity and my faith became my foundation rather than running being the rock that I was standing on.”
In the following months, Ms Wellings says her faith helped her to overcome an eating disorder that she’d had since she was 13. She says that while it “didn’t all of a sudden go away” after she found Christ, it was a “process of transforming my thoughts and…constantly catching the way I was speaking about myself and using God’s Word to align with how I saw myself…”
“[W]ithout my faith, I dare say, that would have been a really difficult thing to overcome,” she adds.
Ms Wellings’ faith has also helped her to come to terms with the ups and downs of her running career.
“I don’t think I would have gotten through all of the injuries and everything without my faith,” she says. She adds that while there have been times when she has questioned God’s sovereignty over events, her life may have been very different without the tough times.
And that includes the time when injury prevented her from competing in the Beijing Games in 2008 – an event which saw her head to the US for training where she first met Mr Achon.
“I wouldn’t have met my friend Julius, we wouldn’t have started Love Mercy and we might not have gone to Uganda – all these things that kind of came from that foot injury that I was devastated about, that brought so much disappointment.”
Top – Eloise Wellings on the track/Below – Eloise Wellings and Julius Achon. PICTURES: Supplied.
“I don’t think I would have gotten through all of the injuries and everything without my faith.”
– Eloise Wellings
Ms Wellings, who notes that when she first met Mr Achon, she “didn’t even know where Uganda was on the map”, soon struck up a friendship with the Ugandan.
Mr Achon is a former child soldier – he’d been forced as a boy to join the Lord’s Resistance Army and was with them for several months before he was able to escape – who had been inspired to take up running by the success of the first ever Ugandan Olympic gold medalist, hurdler John Akii-Bua.
He’d become a junior world champion and gone on to represent his country at both the Sydney and Atlanta Olympic Games before he met Eloise in 2008, while living in Portland in the US assisting with training.
Their passion for running and their faith in Jesus Christ were both important factors in creating what may have seemed, at first glance, an unlikely friendship. And when Mr Achon told Eloise about how he was sending money back to Uganda to support some orphans, the seeds for Love Mercy was sown.
Ms Wellings and her husband Jon – the couple now have a four-year-old daughter India – visited Uganda to attend Julius’ wedding some months later and were so moved by what they saw that in 2010, she and Mr Achon set up Love Mercy, initially to provide sponsorship money for orphans.
The main focus of the organisation is now another initiative called Cents for Seeds, an agricultural loan program which is aimed primarily at women. The initiative, which started with just 100 women, encourages people to donate $30 which is used to buy 30 kilograms of seeds. These are then given to a woman as a loan and the crops which result (estimated at about 300 kiligrams) are then used to feed her family with any surplus sold off and the money used to send the children to school.
This year there’s some 13,8000 women involved with the project with plans to have that increase to 20,000 by 2020, says Ms Wellings.
“Women are essentially typically the main care-takers of the children in northern Uganda. And they’re incredibly hard-workers. The men do help with the farming but essentially the women have the responsibility to hand back the loan.”
But back to the Commonwealth Games. Ms Wellings, who is scheduled to run in both the 5,000 and 10,000 metre events, says that she’s looking forward to running in front of a home crowd.
“Being able to prepare at home has been really nice,” she says. “Normally you’re away from friends and family and things…It’s just nice to prepare at home and to be able to compete in front of a home crowd.”
But she adds that her relationship with God has changed what she views as success and that for her it’s been the journey across her running career, not necessarily the outcomes, that has counted most.
“We can’t take our medals to Heaven,” she notes. “I believe God can use the medal winners – and the people that come last. I believe it’s more about the opportunities that you have on a day-to-day basis, through whatever season you’re in, to glorify God, whether…you’re standing on the podium or you’re walking around in an Aircast [brace]. I think God delights in us at all times…as long as we’re trusting in Him.”
To find out about how you can help support the work of Love Mercy, head to the website.
